


It was you alone who came

by Loverofchimkem



Category: Persona 5
Genre: Gen, Self-Harm, other self destructive behaviors mentioned, those last few only show up briefly/ are mentioned)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 09:00:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15264009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loverofchimkem/pseuds/Loverofchimkem
Summary: Akira was sitting on the floor shaking slightly and leaning his back against the crates that made up his bed, skin drained of almost all of its color and head hanging forward, his hair obscuring Ryuji's view of the rest of his face. His hands hung limply at his sides, a razor blade held in his right one while his left arm was covered in still-bleeding cuts.or the one where Akira's had a bad night and Ryuji comes to the rescue.





	It was you alone who came

**Author's Note:**

> so this is a thing I wrote, I hope you enjoy it and have a nice day/night

Ryuji stood at the top of the stairs leading to Akira's attic bedroom, out of breath and exhausted from running all the way from his apartment to Yongen in the middle of the night, shocked at the sight before him.

 

Akira was sitting on the floor shaking slightly and leaning his back against the crates that made up his bed, skin drained of almost all of its color and head hanging forward, his hair obscuring Ryuji's view of the rest of his face. His hands hung limply at his sides, a razor blade held in his right one while his left arm was covered in still-bleeding cuts.

 

Looking at what his best friend had done, Ryuji couldn't help but want to kick himself. Thinking back, there had been more than enough clues that something was wrong.

 

Like the way Akira’s already thin frame had kept slimming down even though he got more than enough to eat — all the trips to Ogikubo were a testament to that fact.

 

Like the way he’d withdraw into himself over the past few weeks, rebuilding every single wall that Ryuji and the rest of the Phantom Thieves had worked so hard to break down, reverting to a state of stoicism and aloofness that was far too reminiscent of the first few weeks Ryuji had known him, back when you were lucky to get more than five words out of him during any given conversation. 

 

Like the way he worked himself to the bone when things continued to ramp up with Okumura, often refusing to return to the real world even after he grew so exhausted that he couldn't even summon his personas anymore and had to resort to slashing the enemies with his knife. Oftentimes, he only gave up for the day at the others’ insistence.

 

All of these should have been clear signs that Akira wasn’t doing well, that he needed help, but Ryuji and the rest of the thieves chose to write it all off as their friend being a bit stressed and overworked, saying that after Okumura’s change of heart, everything would go back to normal.

 

Instead, what they’d got was one newly orphaned teammate, and another all but knocking on death's door.

 

Shaking those thoughts out of his head, Ryuji carefully made his way across the hardwood floor of the attic until he was kneeling next to Akira. By the time Ryuji reached him, he’d managed to lift his head up revealing glassy, unfocused eyes.

 

“You’re here,” he slurred out, sounding as if just those simple words took far too much effort to get out.

 

“Course I'm here, what, did you think I was just gonna ignore those texts you sent me?”

 

_ Those texts _ were a series of texts he had received almost two hours earlier that consisted of a repeated string of “I'm sorry’s” and “please forgive me’s” that gradually got more and more garbled as time passed until, eventually, they’d stopped coming entirely, around the time he’d reached the Yongen-Jaya platform.

 

The terror he’d felt at the abrupt break in the near constant stream of text had been more than enough to fuel him during the last stretch of his run, and the unadulterated fear had given him the strength needed to kick the cafe's door in.

 

Akira made a small noise to let Ryuji know that he was listening before falling quiet again, giving Ryuji the opportunity to get a good look at exactly how bad the damage he’d done to himself was.

 

The cuts started off relatively small and shallow near the wrist, with some being little more superficial paper cuts while others were still beading up with a few drops of blood.

 

Farther up his arm, the cuts started to become more like slashes, getting longer, deeper, and trading clean straight lines for shaky jagged edges. These still had a constant stream of blood leaking out of them and collecting in a puddle on the floor.

 

Knowing that Akira’s life was in immediate danger if he didn’t stop the bleeding immediately , but unwilling to leave Akira's side to fetch the first aid kit that he knew was safely stored under the cafe’s bar, Ryuji looked frantically around for something to bandage the wounds with, but came up empty-handed and resorted to pulling off his shirt and wrapping the bright yellow fabric tightly around Akira's arm.

 

He waited a minute to see if that was enough to stop the flow of blood, but after a minute had passed without the bloodstain’s steady march across the brightly colored cloth slowing at all, he knew that desperate action was necessary.

 

Luckily, his mom had made him go to first aid classes a few years ago; they had covered everything from how to properly do the Heimlich maneuver to how to help someone with hypothermia. The lesson he was the most thankful for right now was the one on how to properly apply a tourniquet.

 

Quickly pulling himself to his feet, Ryuji all but ran to where Akira's bag was sitting next to the stairs and snatched it up before returning to his spot next to Akira, who was looked heavily confused as his addled brain failed to understand Ryuji's sudden disappearance and subsequent reappearance.

 

The straps weren't too difficult to rip off; the fact they were already close to the breaking point thanks to Morgana's habit of chewing on them whenever he got bored probably helped with that.

 

“I’ve been wondering,” Ryuji started, talking slowly so that Akira could catch everything he said, as he maneuvered Akira's arm into a better position to apply the makeshift tourniquet.

 

“Where's Morgana run off to? He usually stays with you doesn't he,” he asked, wrapping the strip of nylon around Akira’s arm, a few inches above the highest of the cuts.

 

“Made ‘im stay with ‘taba tonight, I didn’ want ‘im to see this,” Akira said in the same slow and slightly slurred voice as before. “I didn’ want ‘im to try an stop me,” followed after a slight pause, and Ryuji found that he had nothing to say to that. He’d already figured that was most of, if not entirely, the reason for the cat’s absence, and as much as it made  him want to scream at the two of them — Morgana for leaving Akira alone, and Akira for pulling this stunt in the first place — he knew it wouldn't do.

 

It wasn't until he heard a pained whimper coming from Akira that he snapped out of his thoughts and realized just how tightly he was pulling the strap around his arm. Luckily, or perhaps unluckily for Akira, that pressure was exactly what was needed to finally put a stop to the bleeding, and he quickly tied off the knot that would keep the jury-rigged tourniquet in place.

 

Glancing down at the phone lying face down in the puddle beside Akira, he vaguely remembered a conversation from way back when they were still dealing with Kamoshida. Ann had gotten on his ass about where and how he was getting such strong medicines from, to which Akira had explained that he was helping out a doctor near the cafe who was letting him have some of her medicine as thanks.

 

He prayed that she’d be willing to ignore exactly how late it was and help out, partly because he really didn’t want to have to wait for an ambulance to find some hole in the wall coffee shop, but mostly because Akira talked about her like he trusted her and that was more than enough for Ryuji to trust her too.

 

“Hey, hey, you have that doctor lady's number on your phone, yeah?”

 

It took longer than he would have prefered for Akira to refocus on him — as much as he could focus on anything right now at least— before nodding in confirmation, and Ryuji wasted no time snatching the phone off of the floor.

 

He couldn’t help but grimace as he wiped the blood covered screen off on his pants. He was happy to find that there was no lock on the device, seeing as the only one who’d know that hypothetical password was in no fit state to share it.

 

Looking through Akira's most recent texts, he searched for anyone who seemed doctor-ish, and failing that picked the most recent chats that had icons he didn’t recognize, hoping there'd be something to let him know he'd got the right person.

 

It took a few minutes but finally, he got a hit, and a new somewhat worrying piece of information in the form of finding out that Akira has been partaking in secret drug trials — but that was a conversation for another time.

 

Dialing the number, he listened as the phone’s rings began to fill the room, the only other sound being Akira's quick, shallow breaths.

 

As he waited for the doctor— Takemi according to her contact info —  to pick up, he felt Akira shift so that instead of leaning against the bed, he was leaning against Ryuji's side.

 

Now with a good portion of Akira's weight pressing against his side, it was impossible to ignore just how light he was and Ryuji frowned, once again wondering how he could have missed something that was now so obvious.

 

“Something the matter?” he winced slightly when he heard the frustration that managed to seep into his voice, and tried to distract himself by bringing one of his hands up to run it through Akira's hair, which was apparently a good choice as Akira relaxed even further onto him.

 

“Nothin much, is just… ‘ou’re warm and is nice.” Ok, yeah, that made sense now that Ryuji thought about it, considering not only was it the middle of October but also that a good portion of his body heat was sitting in a puddle on the floor.

 

Reaching behind himself, Ryuji grabbed the thick blanket on the bed and wrapped it around both of them, being careful to jostle Akira's arm as little as possible. He wished he could also turn on the space heater, but it was on the other side of the room, it was not an option. As he was arranging the blanket, the beeping from Akira's phone gave way to the robotic voice of an answering machine. 

 

He re-dialed her number, but his hopes of contacting her via phone were shrinking as the fact that she hadn’t answered right away likely meant that she was either a deep sleeper or her phone was out of earshot. Neither of those options boded well for him.

 

He decided that he’d try to call her two or three more times, just in case she was ignoring her phone, before moving on to his back up plan, which involved calling Futaba, who he knew without a doubt was still up, and getting her, or more likely Sojiro, to get Takemi directly.

 

“This any better?” Ryuji asked after he finished adjusting the blanket so that nothing below either of their necks was exposed to the open air save for the arm that was still holding the phone.

 

In lieu of a verbal answer, Akira simply hummed in affirmation as he snuggled closer, ending up with his face all but buried in Ryuji's neck.

 

Satisfied that Akira wasn't about to freeze to death, Ryuji allowed himself to relax ever so slightly.

 

The two of them stayed in that position for a few minutes, only moving when Ryuji had to re-enter Takemi’s number.

 

Ryuji was almost certain that Akira had fallen asleep; his breathing while still a bit on the fast side was much slower and steadier than it had been before. He was fairly certain that letting Akira sleep wasn't going to hurt him in the long run, not unless he’d somehow managed to give himself a concussion. After a quick search with his fingers revealed no obvious bumps or bruises, he felt comfortable enough to let Akira continue sleeping.

 

So Ryuji sat in near silence as he waited impatiently for the phone to transfer him over to voicemail for the fourth time, his finger gently tapping the back of the phone in time with the ringing.

 

This time, instead of re-entering Takemi’s number, he called Futaba, who picked up on the third ring.

 

“Ryuji?” came Futaba's voice from across the line, sounding confused and only slightly tired. “What are you doing calling me at,” there was a pause as the girl, presumably, checked some clock, “ 1:39 AM?”

 

“That's kind of a long story and we don't really have time for that?” It wasn’t a complete lie; the tourniquet could stay on for around two hours, although even with Futaba on the phone he had no way of knowing how long it would take the doctor to get reach the cafe, and the sooner it was off the better. Mostly, though, he wanted to put off telling her that her might-as-well-be-brother had tried to kill himself until they were face to face.

 

“Listen, can you just get Boss on the phone for me? I really need him to do something.” He knew he sounded desperate, mostly because he was so he made no effort to try and hide it. He hoped that if anything, it would help convince her to hand the phone over.

 

“Uh, yeah, sure. But you better explain what’s happening later, you got that!” He could hear the hesitation in her voice, a crystal clear sign that she wanted to question him further. It was only there for a second, but it was there and the sound of it made guilt claw at his insides. The last thing he wanted to do was hide things from her, but at the same time, he knew it was for the best that she didn't find out this way.

 

After that, the line went silent for a few minutes, with only Futaba's occasional yelling as she worked to wake up Sojiro.

 

It took a moment or two after that for them to return to Futaba's room, and Ryuji couldn't help but feel a sense of relief when he heard Sojiro’s sleep laden grunt.

 

“Kid, whatever it is you need had better be da—”

 

“This had better be damned important or I’ll never hear the end of it, I know, and it is, so I need you to go get the doctor who lives around here, her name is apparently Takemi or something, and send her to the cafe, yes I’m serious, no it can't wait, yes I promise I’ll explain later,” Ryuji rushed out, hoping that the man would just do as he asked without wasting time asking too many questions.

 

“And please, since I know you’re gonna come here, don't let Futaba follow you.”

 

His request seemed to make Sojiro pause and was apparently enough to convince him to drop any questions he had for now and do as asked.

 

As the call came to a close, Ryuji finally allowed himself to relax completely. Now that he knew help was on the way, a sudden exhaustion overcame him, and he laid his head on top of Akira's and fell asleep himself.

**Author's Note:**

> believe it or not, this was inspired by the full version of break in to break out.
> 
> also, you can thank the pegoryu discord server for this one because it is full of enablers who helped keep me going, but also my lovely editor lody who fixed up my words and made the pretty!
> 
> also-also, i might make a sequel to this at some point, or a prequel, who really knows
> 
> Also-also-also comments are greatly appreciated! I would love to know what you think about this! I dont bite promise!


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